Opinion: Sinter Klaas evolved into Santa Claus kneeling at the manger

Kneeling Santa is depicted in a painting at Star of the Sea School by Eileen Martin, based on a Kneeling Santa Christmas card.

St. Nicholas was a fourth-century Catholic bishop of Myra, in modern Turkey, who vehemently opposed the Arian heresy which denied the divinity and eternity of Jesus Christ. His parents died when Nicholas was a young man, leaving him with a healthy inheritance.

Determined to devote his inheritance to works of charity, Nicholas discovered a destitute father with three daughters who could find no husbands because of their poverty.

To save the father from giving his daughters over to human trafficking, Nicholas provided bags of gold for each of the daughters. Using the gold as a dowry, each of the girls were married in due time. This inspiring story resulted in Nicholas being recognized as an example of generosity for all people, young and old.

Devotion to Nicholas spread from the Middle East into Greece and Russia, where he is still recognized as the patron saint. In time, Nicholas began to be honoured also in Europe, and then in England where 400 churches were dedicated in his honour in the later Middle Ages.

Following the Reformation, Protestants abolished the veneration and traditions associated with saints. Only the Dutch Protestants preserved the ancient tradition of a visit from St. Nicholas on Dec. 6. They referred to St. Nicholas as Sinter Klaas.

When the Dutch settled in New York City in the early 1600s, they brought their tradition of Sinter Klaas. In fact, their first church in New York City carried his name. The English took over the Dutch colony in 1674. English children, seeing how Dutch children received presents from Sinter Klaas on Dec. 6, felt left out. They, too, wanted presents from Sinter Klaas, which their British accent now pronounced as Santa Claus.

To accommodate their children, and to maintain the Reformation distancing from saints, the English Protestants transferred gift giving from Dec. 6 to Christmas Eve, Dec. 24. Gift giving now became part of the traditional Christmas festivities. St. Nicholas was morphed into a mixture of Father Christmas, popular in England at the time, Christmas Man — part of the evolution of Santa Claus, the mythical god Thor and leftovers of St. Nicholas. Today’s good natured and benevolent Santa Claus is a distant relative of St. Nicholas whose DNA has been radically changed.

The movement some years ago to “put Christ back into Christmas” expressed Christians’ disfavour with Santa Claus wedging his way into the birthday of the Lord Jesus. Indeed, in some cases, Santa shoved Jesus not only out of the crib but entirely out of Christmas Day and the Christmas season. Christians became ill at ease with Santa.

While respecting his image as good, peaceful and joyful, Christian parents saw their children giving him and all he is associated with (consumerism, parties) almost all of their attention.

The birthday of Christ was anti-climatic and of little interest up against Santa’s glamour and outpouring of presents.

How to handle this red-suited gentleman, who sidetracks the youth and their parents?

Santa and the Christ child became sparring opponents, the King of Cash versus the King of Peace.

In the mid 1970s, Ray Gauer, a Los Angeles attorney, undertook a personal campaign to reconcile Santa with the Lord Jesus, and to put Santa into Christmas. He commissioned Walt Disney sculptor Rudolph Vargas to depict Santa kneeling at the feet of the Christ Child. Vargas produced a statuette of Kneeling Santa.

The initial statuette precipitated a wide range of other Kneeling Santa products: Kneeling Santa Christmas cards, Kneeling Santa buttons, mugs, a tape cassette story of Kneeling Santa, etc., and a television special entitled Santa and the Christ Child, based on a story by Nicholas Bakewell, Gauer’s partner.

Placing Santa in the nativity scene along with Mary and Joseph and the three wise men, who were neither Jew nor Christian, could be the star that leads children to Jesus.

To put Santa into the Christmas story is consistent with what the Catholic Church has often done through the centuries. Based on Jesus’ words: “I have come not to destroy, but to fulfil,” a fundamental Christian missionary principle is to use what is found, even non-Christian symbols, and give them a Christian meaning.

An example of not destroying, but building upon and fulfilling what is found, was illustrated in the third century. Dec. 21 is the shortest day of the year. Every day after the 21st is progressively longer and bears more light. On Dec. 24, a few days into the days of greater light, the non-Christian Roman Empire of the third century celebrated the birthday of its unconquered sun god. The sun had not died but was beaming again!

Christians used the evening of that birthday, with its emphasis on light, to celebrate Christmas Eve and the birthday of Jesus, the Son of God, the Light of the world, for Romans and all people.

May Santa continue to kneel before Jesus and bring the rest of us with him, and so fulfil the words of St. Paul: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend … and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Phil. 2:9-11.

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